Cyber Incident Classification System in focus of OSCE workshop

The OSCE Secretariat’s Transnational Threats Department (TNTD) organized a workshop on national cyber incident classification - a metric system for the classification of cyber incidents.

On 18 and 19 April 2024 cyber/ICT security experts and policymakers from Eastern Europe, Central Asia, South Caucasus, South-Eastern Europe and Mongolia shared experiences and good practices across the OSCE area. With the exponential increase in cyber incidents, experts highlighted that creating a cyber/ICT incident classification system is essential to enabling the proper prioritization and management of incidents, particularly those affecting critical infrastructure.

Hans Lüber, representative of Malta's 2024 OSCE Chairpersonship stated: ”Your exchanges about the challenges and recommendations for implementing national cyber incident classification systems is yet a positive example of how the OSCE can make a difference.”

“The OSCE is an important regional forum for discussing cyber confidence building measures. The adoption of voluntary national arrangements to classify ICT incidents by their scale and seriousness is an important practical way to address the security of critical infrastructure,” said Ambassador Christophe Kamp, Permanent Representative of the Kingdom of the Netherlands to the OSCE and Chair of the OSCE Informal Working Group on Cyber/ICT Security.

Alena Kupchyna, OSCE Co-ordinator of Activities to Address Transnational Threats added "By raising awareness about the elements and benefits of national cyber incident classification, participating States can not only harmonize national co-ordination, but also enhance co-operative approaches to cyber incident management.”

Participants also engaged in a table-top exercise to explore practical applicability of the OSCE’s 16 cyber/ICT security confidence-building measures (CBMs). These are practical measures which address misperceptions and misunderstandings in cyberspace by fostering transparency, communication and co-operation between States. The exercise focused on how CBMs can prevent escalatory trajectories in a cyber incident and underlined the importance of cross-border co-operation when protecting critical infrastructure.

The workshop is a part of the “Facilitation of the development and implementation of National Cyber Incident Severity Scales (NCISS) and related measures to protect critical infrastructures” project, which is funded by France and Germany.